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What the new science of magic reveals about perception and free will Magicians have long exploited quirks in our perception of the world to make us experience the impossible. Now, cognitive psychology is exploring how they do it and revealing fresh insights into how our minds work.
posted by dhruva at 12:01 PM - 1 comment

depending on your personal philosophies, you’ll see the beautiful young women in question as empowered, exploited, or something in between. regardless of your stance, the hot girl economy will keep on running. the only thing that might disrupt business as usual is if RHRGs stopped buying in and started warning their younger counterparts about the trade-offs. but do they want to? or, when all is said and done, do the benefits still outweigh the costs? i asked a few RHRG friends (who prefer to remain anonymous) the following question to assess their thoughts on the matter. from inside the hot girl economy
posted by chavenet at 11:39 AM - 2 comments

After decades of translating literature from Japanese to Swedish, the career of daughter-mother translation team Yukiko Duke and Eiko Duke came to an end when Eiko passed away in 2024. In "The Joy of Translating is Gone" (translated from Swedish by Ian Giles), Yukiko reflects on their career, their relationship, and the act of translation.
posted by mixedmetaphors at 10:49 AM - 2 comments

The right-wing war on empathy. No more love thy neighbour as thyself. Evangelical Christians, right-wing academics, and tech-bro extremists agree that the great evil and sin of society today is caring about other people.
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:31 AM - 54 comments

Top American scientists just lost their jobs; Canada is rolling out the welcome mat. [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 6:40 AM - 40 comments

IBM Design Language
posted by Lemkin at 6:32 AM - 7 comments

The rights to Threads, a documentary-style drama set in Sheffield to a backdrop of deteriorating global politics, have been picked up by Warp Films, the makers of Adolescence, and will be rebooted as a series. The original trailer and [CW: a bit grim] closing scene.
posted by Wordshore at 5:52 AM - 36 comments

For an outside-the-US person this is a decent (and very wry) explanation of the US political system's workings and the current serious threat. via Hacker News.
posted by unearthed at 1:40 AM - 35 comments

Humans possess the remarkable ability to flexibly acquire and apply abstract concepts when interpreting the concrete world around us. Consider the concept "maze": our mental model can interpret mazes constructed with conventional materials (e.g., drawn lines) or unconventional ones (e.g., icing), and reason about mazes across a wide range of configurations and environments (e.g., in a cardboard box or on a knitted square). Our goal is to build systems that can make such flexible and broad generalizations as humans do. This necessitates a reconsideration of a fundamental question: what makes a maze look like a maze?
posted by chavenet at 12:38 AM - 4 comments

There are 368 chickens remaining.
Free them by matching three.
(The source code is all on the page, which is fun.)
posted by Going To Maine at 9:04 PM - 25 comments

Across India, in metro markets from Delhi’s Nehru Place to Mumbai’s Lamington Road, technicians like Prasad are repurposing broken and outdated laptops that many see as junk. These "Frankenstein” machines — hybrids of salvaged parts from multiple brands — are sold to students, gig workers, and small businesses, offering a lifeline to those priced out of India’s growing digital economy. (archive)
posted by Lemkin at 7:29 PM - 13 comments

Endangered Carnaby’s black cockatoos, and the teenager building nests for them. Eva Czislowski began building artificial nests in high school.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:25 PM - 1 comment

It's been four years since we last heard from him (his voice, not his stealthy moves), but his heyday was truthfully well over a decade ago. But now he's back! ASK A NINJA HAS RETURNED with a multiple question video, with potentially more to follow. He looks forward to killing you again soon!
posted by JHarris at 2:11 PM - 8 comments

Next week, DOGE and IRS leadership are expected to host dozens of engineers in DC so they can begin “ripping up the old systems” and building the API, an IRS engineering source tells WIRED. The goal is to have this task completed within 30 days. Sources say there have been multiple discussions about involving third-party cloud and software providers like Palantir in the implementation. [more inside]
posted by subdee at 2:02 PM - 59 comments

Colossus Biosciences has brought back the dire wolf (puppies!). Next animals on the list -the wooly mammoth, the dodo and the Tasmanian tiger. I hear the beginning of the Jurassic Park theme song swelling in the background...
posted by ichimunki at 12:52 PM - 46 comments

Living in a staff flat above Blenheim Palace, the guest services supervisor was used to strange noises. But when fire alarms began to blare, she knew something was wrong. She quickly began evacuating to the great courtyard. But unbeknown to her, she was running straight into the final moments of an audacious heist. Five men had smashed their way into the palace, ripped out a £4.8m solid gold toilet and fled in a stolen Volkswagen Golf. The working loo, entitled America, had been on display for just two days at the 18th Century stately home, plumbed in as part of an exhibition by the Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan.
posted by chavenet at 12:42 PM - 4 comments

Ever had the thought "I should build a boat"? You probably shouldn't however if you can't help yourself BoatDesign.net forums are a web 1.0 one stop shop for information on boat building whether composite or wood or metal. Maybe you need some design help. Or you want to build a boat to a formula for racing. Or maybe your construction list can be satiated just by looking at some designs.
posted by Mitheral at 12:38 PM - 8 comments

Article in The Guardian about Barry Enderwick, who makes Sandwiches of History on Instagram. Article includes his five best and worst, from a two-thousand-year-old beef sandwich with ginger, soy and fennel, to the 1946 Goblin Sandwich (nuts, ham and avocado in a doughnut).
posted by paduasoy at 10:46 AM - 17 comments

The art of noodle pulling. Beautifully filmed, two masters of noodle pulling do their thing and it’s a feast for the eyes. These guys are totally over the top and yet I believe every single word they say.

[more inside]
posted by ashbury at 10:10 AM - 9 comments

Clem Burke, drummer for Blondie and many varied side projects, passed away Sunday at 70. [more inside]
posted by potrzebie at 9:42 AM - 36 comments

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr is taking a hard line against broadcast TV stations accused of bias against Republicans and President Trump. To pressure broadcasters, Carr is invoking the rarely enforced news distortion policy that was developed starting in the late 1960s and says the FCC should consider revoking broadcast licenses.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:06 AM - 73 comments

Saâda Bonaire were a German band based in Bremen active in the 80s and 90s. The three core members were singers Claudia Hossfeld, Stephanie Lange and Ralf Behrendt, who DJ'd as Ralph "Von" Richthoven, but they worked with dozens of other musicians, from dub producers to world musicians that Behrendt met at the immigration center where he worked. They only released one single during their existence, You Could Be More As You Are, which became a cult favorite among Balearic DJs. They were rediscovered in the early 2010s when an eponymous collection of their 80s material was released. A decade later, their music from the 90s followed. Back then, and even today, no one quite looked or sounded like them.
posted by Kattullus at 1:50 AM - 8 comments

Kelly finds in the post-boomer generation a shared ethical disposition that is “deeply informed by politics and economics,” along with an aesthetic sensibility governed by a “self-conscious acknowledgement of complicity” with the prevailing market mentality of the 1990s. New Sincerity distinguishes itself from its precursors and its contemporaries through its ambivalent “admission of uncertainty about ‘actual feeling’ and actual solutions, as a symptom of the imaginative limits imposed by the dominance of normative neoliberalism.” from Toward an Aesthetic of Post-Boomer Fiction, a review of New Sincerity by Adam Kelly [LARB; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 1:38 AM - 8 comments

With the big news of Monday 7th April 2025 being the construction of a Creme Egg as tall as an emperor penguin and as heavy as a newborn horse (breakfast recipe), this week's Free Thread asks if you have ever encountered something too large to deal with. An enormous meal? A river too wide to cross? An assignment beyond your capabilities? Or anything else that was too much, or just talk about what's going on in your life, or some (normal size) food you've recently enjoyed - because it's your weekly Free Thread.
posted by Wordshore at 12:40 AM - 64 comments

Under Bass Strait's surface lies a vast land humans once called home. The mountain peaks of a landscape now under water are all that remains visible of a once grassy plain that connected Tasmania to mainland Australia. Up until approximately 10,000–8,000 years ago, the Furneaux Group of Islands and King Island in Bass Strait, as they are now known, would have been a mountain range in a surrounding plain. Humans, wombats, emus and large kangaroos are thought to have lived in the area informally known as the Bass or Bassian Plain.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:15 AM - 1 comment

Mexican Humanism: For the good of all, first the poor - "On January 12, tens of thousands of Mexican citizens packed into the Zócalo to hear President Claudia Sheinbaum deliver her report on the first 100 days of government. Her announcements reflected an agenda both ambitious in scale and comprehensive in scope: sixteen new laws and twelve constitutional reforms ranging from the recognition of Indigenous peoples and the real increase in the minimum wage, to the recovery of Mexico's national ownership of natural resources and a crackdown on tax evasion. 'Let it be heard loud and clear,' Sheinbaum said. 'We will not return to the neoliberal model ... We will continue with Mexican Humanism and with the maxim of 'For the good of all, first the poor.''" (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 11:42 PM - 24 comments

Dave Allen, bass player for seminal post-punk band Gang Of Four and later Shriekback passes away at the age of 69. [more inside]
posted by tim_in_oz at 9:38 PM - 32 comments

This person on YouTube makes documentaries about arcade games. Zaxxon! Q*bert! Spy Hunter! Dragon's Lair! Dozens more!
posted by Lemkin at 7:17 PM - 10 comments

Ralph Goff appears to be a casualty of Trump's, Laura Loomer assisted purge of National Security leaders. Ralph was a 35 year employee and manager at the Central Intelligence Agency. Recently he was in the process of being appointed the Deputy Director for Operations until he was disqualified for his steadfast support of Ukraine and his antipathy towards Vladimir Putin. People can disagree about wether the CIA should exist. But as long as it's here, we would like it's employees and leaders to be competent, intelligent and human. In a series of recent interviews, including one with the odious Dan Crenshaw, Ralph brings the CIA out of the shadows and reveals himself to be the person you would have wanted in this important position.
posted by Xurando at 6:44 PM - 14 comments

If we ask what cannabis can do for philosophy, on the contrary, I think that the disappointing answer is – not very much. It is a well-worn cliché that the halo of brilliance surrounding our thinking when we are high does not generally stand the test of critical evaluation in the sober aftermath. I do not personally believe that using cannabis can enhance philosophical creativity or produce insights or ideas, let alone good philosophical solutions to important philosophical problems that would not otherwise occur to a philosopher straight. from Philosophers Stoned by Dale Jacquette
posted by chavenet at 1:33 PM - 38 comments

Over on Ars Technica, long time space industry writer Eric Berger landed a 10 minute slot to interview astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams about what went wrong on the Boeing Crew Flight Test to the International Space Space.

Those 10 minutes ended up being a half hour as the astronauts went into detail about how bad things actually became .
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:34 AM - 24 comments

In the wake of our recent conjectures about a world without advertising, Slate's Ethan Ris says There's a Nuclear Option to Fight Trump's War Against Colleges. You Aren't Going to Like It.

I like it.

(archive link) [more inside]
posted by Rash at 9:45 AM - 54 comments

Meeting Gary's favourite economist: Ha-Joon Chang (49m52s)
Special: Can tariffs make you rich? with Ha-Joon Chang (10m10s)
(Gary's Economics, YouTube) [more inside]
posted by flabdablet at 8:54 AM - 13 comments

ellecordova - Punctuation marks hanging out.
posted by signal at 7:27 AM - 21 comments

This-is-Cool.co.uk has lots of sf/fantasy/horror stuff, but I’m in it for the concept art.
posted by Lemkin at 6:58 AM - 2 comments

Exceptional: Rat earns world record for sniffing out landmines in Cambodia. Landmine-hunting rat Ronin has set a new world record by sniffing out more than 100 mines. Ronin, a giant African pouched rat, has tracked down 109 landmines and 15 other potentially deadly war remnants since his deployment to northern Preah Vihear province in August 2021, according to Belgian charity APOPO. Five-year-old Ronin has been named the most successful Mine Detection Rat (MDR) in the organisation's history.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 2:38 AM - 15 comments

There is no theoretical limit to the number of uses an object has. This means that the appearance of new functions in evolution can’t be predicted — and yet some new functions can dictate the very rules of how the system evolves subsequently. “The biosphere is creating its own possibilities,” Kauffman said. “Not only do we not know what will happen, we don’t even know what can happen.” from Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex [Quanta; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 2:16 AM - 15 comments

Walk down the block of a wealthy neighborhood at night, and you might be surprised by how much you can see. One uncovered window might reveal the glow of a flatscreen TV across from a curved couch; through another, you might glimpse a marble kitchen island and a chandelier. Of course, some of the curtains are closed—but many are flung open, the home’s interiors exposed, like you’re peering into a showroom. Uncovered windows have quietly become a fixture of high-end homes across America. The New York Times recently referred to the “obligatory uncurtained windows” of Brooklyn Heights, a rich enclave in New York City, and The Root pointed out that this seemed common among wealthy young white people living in gentrified urban areas. On TikTok, onlookers have been baffled by the trend—and, sometimes, tempted to pry. Although this phenomenon is most visible in cities, the link between wealth and exposed windows extends across the United States. [...] The line isn’t smooth as you slide up and down the income scale, but the overall trend is clear: The choice to draw or not draw the curtains is in part driven by class.

The Atlantic: Why Rich People Don’t Cover Their Windows [ungated] [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 9:35 PM - 129 comments

Horror. Darkness hasn't quite fallen yet, but when it does, The Mekons would be your perfect band for your "end of the world" party. [more inside]
posted by maupuia at 3:36 PM - 18 comments

Even as an advertiser (especially as an advertiser), I am convinced that outlawing advertising is the best thing we can do for our world now. More than gun control. More than tackling climate change. More than lowering the price of eggs. Removing these advanced manipulation tools would force everyone—politicians included—to snap back into reality. By outlawing advertising, the machinery of mass delusion would lose its most addictive and toxic fuel. from What If We Made Advertising Illegal? [Kōdō Simone]
posted by chavenet at 12:31 PM - 90 comments

Shawna: A Life on the Sex Offender Registry
posted by Lemkin at 9:48 AM - 66 comments

Over 1,200 "Hands Off!" protests are taking place today across all 50 states, including a large gathering expected on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Organized by a coalition of more than 150 groups -- civil rights organizations, labor unions, LGBTQ+ advocates, veterans -- the demonstrations oppose recent power grabs by President Trump and the destructive DOGE cuts of adviser Elon Musk: mass federal employee layoffs, agency shutdowns, the closure of Social Security offices, and other broad executive overreaches. To participate or find a local protest, visit the official "Hands Off!" event map at Mobilize.us. More: Know Your Rights - Tips for attending a protest - Virtual actions if you can't make it (or live outside the US) - Livestream
posted by Rhaomi at 9:08 AM - 128 comments

Hannah Barlow was a nineteenth-century artist working on ceramics. The link is to a blog post by Amanda Draper, curator at the Victoria Gallery and Museum in Liverpool, about Hannah Barlow: "a specialist in animal designs and an endearing, if rather eccentric, colleague who often had mice, frogs and other live creatures emerging from her pockets".
posted by paduasoy at 5:10 AM - 6 comments

The financial, legal, and reputational implications of sampling and interpolation mean that while reproducing or imitating sound is sometimes formally acknowledged by artists, many others times it is not. The connections we propose here are our interpretation, based on one or more of acknowledged credits by the artists, third-party interpretation, or the sonic evidence available to us.
posted by chavenet at 1:30 AM - 7 comments

If you took Shortpacked! (the webcomic) off your RSS feed after it ended in 2015, you may have missed its last seventeen updates, most of them on April 1st of each year. Examples under the cut. [more inside]
posted by one for the books at 8:17 PM - 6 comments

Scientists collect unique sea creatures during voyage to East Antarctica. From giant sea spiders to sea pigs and sea butterflies — analysing the rich biodiversity in Antarctica has thrilled researchers studying the impacts of climate change.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:45 PM - 5 comments

But the most jarring aesthetic in this burgeoning MAGA stagecraft is the unbridled embrace of face-altering procedures: plastic surgery, veneers, and injectables like Botox and fillers. (As one Daily Mail headline declared, “Plastic surgery was [the] star of [the] show” at the Republican National Convention in 2024.) The overall look has since been disparagingly referred to as Mar-a-Lago face.” Although plastic surgery and injectables are enjoyed far beyond conservative circles, what distinguishes Mar-a-Lago face from what you and I might contemplate getting done on an especially self-flagellating day is the aggressive, overt nature with which MAGA-ites seem to pursue it.
posted by Lemkin at 1:51 PM - 97 comments

BABYMETAL - from me to u feat. Poppy
posted by signal at 1:05 PM - 8 comments

Microsoft has made a lot of products over its 50 years, ranging from file formats and PC accessories to cloud servers and design languages. A great many were duds — it’s hard to nail everything over five decades — but a lot were memorable, fascinating, or simply excellent products that would go on to be used by billions of people or change the industry in their wake. from The 50 best things Microsoft has ever made [The Verge; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 11:47 AM - 82 comments

Some TV shows take a while to "get good." Modern classics like Breaking Bad, The Wire, Community, and Bojack Horseman are notorious for "starting slow" and are often recommended with a disclaimer like "Give it a few episodes; I promise it gets good!" At the same time, some shows never get good. Recently, I started a spy series called The Agency, which could best be characterized as premium mediocre (at least so far). There are big-name actors (Michael Fassbender, Jeffrey Wright, Richard Gere), expensive sets, and glossy camerawork—but after a few installments, I'm trapped in a liminal space between engaged and listless. At the end of each episode, I'm left with the same thought: "Maybe the next one will get good."

Committing to a mediocre program or continuing with a floundering series elicits a state of (mildly) torturous ambiguity. Should you cut your losses, or is this show some late-blooming classic like Breaking Bad? What is the optimal number of episodes one should watch before cleansing a subpar series from their life? Surely, a universal number must exist! Like 42, but for television. So today, we'll explore how long it takes a new show to reach its full potential and how many lackluster episodes you should grant an established series before cutting ties.

How Many Episodes Should You Watch Before Quitting a TV Show? A Statistical Analysis [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 11:41 AM - 75 comments